A+ _ r \ I i \ <.' f$ \. % , ØI' :' ; \ì 1 . ^ C,r t- w .-r JC "',:::" \ violation of law in the Iran-Contra affair, but the initial manifestation of this change, in the 1985 brief, also ex- plained a significant change that the Admin- istration was in th.e pro- cess of making in the traditional role of the Solicitor General-a role that had been spelled out eight years earlier in an unpublicized Justice Department document. To the Justice Depart- ment in 1977, the major safeguard against errors by an independent So- licitor General was the Supreme Court. If the S.G. made a mistake, the Court could correct him. If the Justices up- held him, "then all the better, for his legal judgment and not that of his superiors was cor- rect." But if the Admin- istration did not grant the Supreme Court this authority, as Edwin Meese was making clear in his speeches about constitutional law , then the S.G.'s dual responsibility to the Court and to the executive branch lost its point. There was no need for the Solicitor to defer to the Court if its opinIons did not say what the law was any more definitively than the judg- ments of the executive branch did, and the S.G. might as well carry to the Justices the policies of the Administra- tion, even where they conflicted with the law as previously expounded by the Court. In the abortion case, Acting Solicitor General Charles Fried served notice that this was what he intended to do. Born Karel Fried in Prague, he fled with his family from the Nazis in 1939 and settled in Manhattan when he was almost six. He once wrote that he "loves his country as a lover would, not as a child loves th parents he never chose." Fried is tall and sharp- nosed, with deep lines etched in his forehead and a pliant mouth that stretches from a tight line, when he is watchful, to a broad grin. Like Paul Bator, whom he replaced in the winter of 1985 as the political deputy in the S.G.'s office, Fried had been a profes- sor at Harvard Law School before joining the Reagan Administration. (F ried was political deputy for just four months.) In fact, before the Ad- ^ '. .....:... :: r;\ :f , ( , , 1 i t -'sj; ;t .,. 1; --- { 'y . f " t t '-) t I , 'Il' 31 "" J. ! - :;r f y \çP , t ' /? 1I . i ) \ H { ,---, . I ; f 1 ' ,.t '(' .......-..........." , ''t '>t {; "'i \ - \ ì\ ' "":--- 1 I<<. ;j ,< "] \. .. 'i , t "' : .' " 0 ' - '1' .." ;t' '1; !øtrv "Thus ends another evening of dancing on the edge of the volcano." . mInIstration brought Bator in, two years earlier, officials in the Justice Department had got in touch with Fried about the job, but Fried had de- clined the overture and recommended his old friend and colleague as an ex- pert in constitutional law . As a scholar in the philosophy of law and a teacher of subj ects like contracts and torts, in which judge-made rules are the heart of the law, and the Constitution is not often central, Fried explained., he had no special knowledge about the busi- ness of the Solicitor General. Though he also taught criminal law, where the Constitution can figure prominently, he had no background in litigation or federal courts. But having been a member of Scholars and Educators for Reagan in 1980, co-chairman of Law Professors for Reagan-Bush in 1984, and, in 1984 and 1985, a consultant to Meese, Fried was eager to find a place in the Administration, and he even- tually accepted one in the S.G .'s office. Fried had earlier shown sympathy for the Reagan agenda by writing oc- casional op-ed and magazine pieces with titles like "Curbing the Judi- ciary," "Questioning Quotas," and "The Trouble with Lawyers." The hallmark of a Fried piece was an argu- ment rocketing along on the strength of its own self-evident truth: "The problem with lawyers, critics say, is the maldistribution of legal services," . because "only big business and the very rich benefit from the legal sys- tem," but "this is nonsense," because "the rich and the big corporations are more victims than beneficiaries of the legal system." The law firms that serve the big corporations charge high fees, and the work done for a company by a firm can be handled more efficiently and just as well by in-house counsel; as for the middle class, it "gets quite enough legal services;" and "the poor need other things far more urgently than they need lawyers." "Many conservatives who see a bad or obnoxious or ugly practice in soci- ety have a recognition of grim reality for what it is," Robert Gordon, who is a professor at Stanford Law School, told the National Law Journal. "Charles is perversely determined to defend some of the obnoxious social practices as not only being tragically unavoidable but as somehow morally compelled. " Fried's writing grew out of his background in the philosophy of law, and the core of his work was a series of books about legal principles-"An Anatomy of Values," "Right and Wrong," and "Contract as Promise" -amounting to a grand declaration that absolute commands of right and wrong should take precedence over the dictates of utilitarianism; that is, do- ing the greatest good for the greatest